Wednesday, February 25, 2009

So Apparently My Idea's Been Done


I've been gathering research material for the board game I'm working on, and making some progress. Then I bought this Transformers board game from Wal-Mart, and it has almost exactly the game mechanic I was planning on using. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm going to quit working on the game, because mine will have a bit more depth than the Transformers one, and mine has freakin' Superman (no offense to Optimus Prime or anything), so it just has to be done. Stay tuned. If you're still reading, that is. :-)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

My Prediction For Sarah Connor



I have a prediction on how Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will end. At least, this is how I would end it.

We'll jump back for a moment to Terminator 2.

John Connor: Can you learn stuff you haven't been programmed with so you could be... you know, more human? And not such a dork all the time?

The Terminator: My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer. But Skynet pre-sets the switch to read-only when we're sent out alone.

Sarah Connor: Doesn't want you doing too much thinking, huh?

The Terminator: No.


Skynet controlled him completely, which logically means that Skynet has direct control over every single terminator and machine that works under it. Skynet is a single computer that has become a single consciousness. In effect, a single person.

Now, Sarah Connor's strategy for keeping Skynet from taking over is to make sure that no computer ever becomes that powerful. This seems a little extreme to me. One computer tries to take over the world, so all computers are evil? Wait, uh... No. I don't think so. Call me ridiculously geeky since we're talking about computers, but that sounds like racism to me.

We've seen a few terminators that have been perfectly capable of not only protecting humans, but getting right close to loving them. There's even a small group of people in the series that are trying to keep John Connor from falling in love with Cameron. If he's in love with a machine, how can he fight them?

Well, there's the problem. There is no "them." There is only one machine that they have to fight.

And here's my solution. If I were fighting a big powerful machine, you know what I would want? My own big powerful machine. And I believe that's what John Connor will want to do. We've already seen him embrace technology. We've seen him trust machines. I personally would like to see the series end with an army of terminators marching on Skynet.

How awesome would that be? Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about... :-D

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I Don't Think Anyone Understands Autism

Jenny was just diagnosed autistic last week. Honestly, it doesn't mean a whole lot to us, except that she gets to go to preschool now. She barely meets the qualifications for autism.

I have been reading up a bit on autism lately, and a news article just happened to pop up that I found rather interesting. There's a belief out there that autism is being caused by vaccines (there's also some that believe it's caused by the way our food is processed).

Now, I'm not the only person who thinks that autism is pretty closely related to ADHD (I was diagnosed with adult ADHD about 6 months ago). They seem pretty similar to me.

Anyway, I have a theory on why we're seeing it more than we used to. I think it's just that. We're seeing it more. It's not that it is happening more, it's just that it's diagnosed more. No one said I was ADHD when I was a kid, they just said I was really active. It wasn't until recently (after a head injury that seems to have made it worse) that I even worried about it. I tend to think that a lot of people I knew growing up would have been diagnosed autistic if they were kids now.

I also have a problem with calling anything of the sort a disorder, but that's another rant for another day perhaps.